CYP Now - NCB Now: Comment - Awaiting the child health strategy

Will 2009 see real progress in joining up approaches to improving child health? Eighteen months ago, The Children's Plan set out the importance of integrating local approaches to child health, and promised a child health strategy in the spring of 2008. Now, as the first green shoots of spring 2009 appear, there is still no strategy.

It is not as if we are short of government strategies. But the child health strategy has carried more importance than most. Ever since Every Child Matters was published, the greatest challenge to joined-up planning has been the chasm of understanding between the NHS and children's services.

The next great opportunity to demonstrate a shared approach is the primary care trust (PCT) plans for 2009/10. These are being finalised across the country, and the child health strategy was intended to provide a powerful message as to how they should look. PCTs are using the NHS Operating Framework as guidance, which makes it clear that children's health - especially tackling obesity - has to be one of the priorities for the year ahead. But we have all been awaiting the child health strategy to make clear how this priority should be translated into firm plans for local action.

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